Schriever Wargame 2010 - Air Force Space Command

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Depending on the adversary, the deterrence strategy may or may not include cost imposition options that are delivered by space and cyber forces. It will depend on whether those options have any deterrent value in the mind of your adversary—and whether he believes you would actually use them in the scenarios that he has laid out in his campaign. It is a critically important point: unlike the mature strategies developed over the years in the nuclear paradigm, the threat of sophisticated space and cyber options does not necessarily deter your adversary from using the same type of military capabilities. Creating disruptive effects by leveraging space and cyber capabilities will certainly have military value, but whether it forms the basis of a viable deterrence strategy is an entirely separate question. The most effective strategy to deter crippling non-kinetic effects may not be to deter the use of space and cyber capabilities, but to deter the entire conflict before it begins, because the benefits of utilizing such capabilities in conflict may not be counterbalanced with costs meaningful to the adversary. Conclusion Thanks to our long history of deterrence thought and our national energy to make the necessary cultural adjustments, space and cyber deterrence concepts are clearly evolving in positive ways. However, nuclear deterrence concepts that worked very well during the Cold War and still work extremely well today do not always translate in practice to the space and cyber domains. At the same time, the fundamental behavioral principles on which classical deterrence theory is based are still valid when applied to the nuclear as well as cyber and space domains: • The need to know and inform in advance; • Motivation of an adversary—what the adversary values, and what would be unacceptable costs; • The importance of making deterrence effective with other means, such as strategic communication, to communicate a clear message of intentions and limits. Strategic communication can play a reinforcing role in communicating our intentions to the adversary as well as broader publics. In the information age, enlisting broader popular support may play as great a role in affecting an adversary’s behavior as flexing military muscle. Finally, areas of increased complexity in the space and cyber domains—attribution is the most salient example—are becoming potentially more complex than in the nuclear age, where we had grown accustomed to a single clearly defined adversary and threat. The challenge of asymmetric threats posed by rogue groups and non-state actors that may acquire weapons of mass destruction is a sobering adjustment to classical deterrence study. Based on observations during the SW 10, this article has attempted to highlight some initial thoughts on where the differences lie. The discussion here has noted where it might be necessary to make some modifications in our approach to objectives and the strategies to implement them, while posing additional questions that will be fertile ground for future wargames. The Schriever Wargames provide an opportunity for space and cyber professionals to experiment with “lessons observed” from previous games and real world scenarios in a penalty-free environment where “out of the box” problem-solving methods can be used. Many of these methods, if successful, can translate directly into real world policies and practices as “lessons implemented.” And that is the ultimate objective of conducting these wargames—to prepare our leadership and our warfighters for the day when the game may no longer be just a game. The invaluable opportunity of SW 10 enables us all to become a more agile, adaptable, and effective force in today’s high technology global environment. Maj Gen Susan J. Helms (BS, Aeronautical Engineering, US Air Force Academy; MS, Aeronautics/Astronautics, Stanford University, California) is director of plans and policy, US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), Offutt AFB, Nebraska. She is directly responsible to the USSTRATCOM commander for the development and implementation of national security policy and guidance; military strategy and guidance; space and weapons employment concepts and policy; and joint doctrine as they apply to the command and the execution of its missions. She is also responsible for the development of the nation’s strategic war plan, strategic support plans for theater combatant commanders, and contingency planning for the global strike mission. General Helms was commissioned from the US Air Force Academy in 1980. She has served as an F-15 and F-16 weapons separation engineer and a flight test engineer. As a flight test engineer, General Helms has flown in 30 types of US and Canadian military aircraft. She has also served as project officer on the CF-18 aircraft as a US Air Force exchange officer to the Canadian Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment. Selected by NASA in January 1990, General Helms became an astronaut in July 1991. On 13 January 1993, then an Air Force major and a member of the space shuttle Endeavour crew, she became the first US military woman in space. She flew on STS-54 (1993), STS-64 (1994), STS-78 (1996), and STS-101 (2000), and served aboard the International Space Station as a member of the Expedition-2 crew (2001). A veteran of five space flights, General Helms has logged 211 days in space, including a spacewalk of eight hours and 56 minutes, a world record. General Helms commanded the 45 th Space Wing at Patrick AFB, Florida. Her staff assignments include tours at Headquarters Air Force Space Command and Air Education and Training Command. 15 High Frontier
Senior Leader Perspective Schriever Wargame 2010 – A Coming of Age Brig Gen Robert J. Chekan, CF Deputy Director, Strategy, Policy and Plans Directorate North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command Peterson AFB, Colorado It was my privilege to lead the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US North Command (USNORTHCOM) team that played in the Schriever Wargame 2010 (SW 10), but my experience with the game dates back to Schriever II Wargame. In 2003, it would have been outrageous to send a team of 25 from NORAD and USNORTHCOM to the game venue—but in 2010 it would have been foolish not to. Schriever has matured into an extraordinary opportunity to think through global security and defense challenges. We came away with awareness and insights that are changing how we operate today, and how we are thinking about our collective security in the future. Schriever has come a long way in just a few years. The early games were more or less running tutorials for many of us. In truth we had very little idea of how space supported us in our daily endeavors, and less understanding of what we should be doing to prepare for space as a contested arena. Our tool kits included some fanciful capabilities and at times seemed bottomless. We were to explore the policy dimensions arising from the use of those fanciful weapons. We made a lot of assumptions about grey space and sprinkled in commercial capabilities if we had the foresight to get our contracts in place before the bad guys did. We worked hard during our stay at Nellis AFB, Nevada, but honestly took very little home with us when we left. The game design, the capabilities, the time frame all were so different from what we encountered every day that there were few take-aways of real significance to the supporting players. It was great that the players outside of Air Force Space Command were getting smarter about space, but in many ways we were the supporting players of a space wargame. To be fair to all the men and women who worked hard to put the early games together they were very much in the walking before running stage of the game evolution, and the players definitely needed to be educated in the ways of space. And absolutely to their credit they remained sufficiently disconnected from their first initiatives so that they could objectively learn and drive the evolution of the game to what it is today. The game today, SW 10, is an example of a good idea driven to become really good by honest self-appraisal. What’s different Just about everything. SW 10 looked into the near future, with capabilities either available today or already under development. Close allies were all present, bringing complexity for sure, but also bringing capabilities and ideas. Both industry and the interagency pieces were fully developed. The combatant commands fielded strong teams. The game ran at the strategic level and the policy dimensions explored not only the what, but also the how. And a big part of this was that the players were all far more space savvy than they were even a few years ago—due in part to the education accomplished by previous Schriever Wargames. The cumulative effect of all of these changes was that the combatant commands all fed more realistic inputs into the game. We did not have to suspend disbelief to engage in the game, rather we had to overlay our understanding of our roles and missions onto the template of the game scenario. We spent a lot of time thinking about what we would really do in the situation, and almost no time trying to break the code on the game tool kits or basic rules of play. We gained insight to real issues that we confront now and will likely confront in the future. So what did we learn at NORAD and USNORTHCOM First, the whole idea of a home and away game needs to be challenged. It’s a no-brainer that degradation of a space system has global effect, but what of cyber degradation The World Wide Web is just that, and significant degradation anywhere is unlikely to remain geographically localized. Also, conventional, kinetic assets are a diminishing resource—if they are spent at home to protect the homeland, the number one mission for every military, they are not available to respond to a security or defense issue anywhere else. The home and away games are connected by space systems, in the cyber domain, and in the resource dimension. They are not independent. Second, we really need to understand how much of what we do everyday—our six missions assigned in the case of these commands—flows in and through space systems and the cyber domain. During the game play it became increasingly obvious that we had a definite dependence on both space and cyber systems. And this makes sense. The NORAD area of operation is global, so global capabilities only available from space and running on the backbones of computer networks fit, but there is more here than meets the eye. Our networks are constantly changing, and many of our mission partners are not resident on Department of Defense systems. Take the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for example. What information flowing from the FAA is critical to our mission accomplishment, and how can this be assured in a contested cyber environment We came away with awareness and insights that are changing how we operate today, and how we are thinking about our collective security in the future. High Frontier 16
Page 1 and 2: INSIDE: Schriever Wargame 2010: Tho
Page 3 and 4: Introduction General C. Robert Kehl
Page 5 and 6: In the confused aftermath of a coor
Page 7 and 8: ing—by the speed in which situati
Page 9 and 10: informational, military, economic s
Page 11 and 12: Subject matter experts from industr
Page 13 and 14: Senior Leader Perspective Schriever
Page 15: Given the spectrum of effects achie
Page 19 and 20: It takes far more intellectual hors
Page 21 and 22: A factor related to economies of sc
Page 23 and 24: Senior Leader Perspective Beyond Sc
Page 25 and 26: While we did introduce cyberspace i
Page 27 and 28: Senior Leader Perspective Flight Su
Page 29 and 30: Successful people are always lookin
Page 31 and 32: Senior Leader Perspective Effects F
Page 33 and 34: ing the luxury of being located tog
Page 35 and 36: Senior Leader Perspective National
Page 37 and 38: are costly and scarce; dependent on
Page 39 and 40: Schriever Wargame 2010 Science Supp
Page 41 and 42: may be willing to host such sensors
Page 43 and 44: The Schriever Challenge needs to cu
Page 45 and 46: Industry Perspective A Comprehensiv
Page 47 and 48: Dynamic, Multi-Layered, Defense-in-
Page 49 and 50: Industry Perspective When the Futur
Page 51 and 52: of the world. Sticking with a Cold
Page 53 and 54: The two problems with the current m
Page 55 and 56: Book Review National Security Space

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